To think nursing is not considered a 'profession' by the general public

[roseability]

We just mop up sick and wipe brows and all that

Do people really consider the nursing profession as 'educated' and on a par with other degree trained professions?

Or should nurses be defined as 'caring' principally, not allowing aspiartions of status to undermine this ideal?

What do doctors really think of nurses?

Just interested

I consider it to be a profession.

I'm a doctor and I think that nursing is a profession, most definitely.

I do think though that a lot of nurses end up in managerial roles once they reach a certain seniority and start to lack clinical contact, often making them whilst perhaps appearing more "professional" to the general public actually less in touch with the needs of patients and the rest of the clinical team.

I consider teaching to be a profession too.

cali!!!

I mean in relation to nursing? If nursing isn't then why should lawyering to be so? Manipilation of argument etc is something we all do everyday. But very few of us perform the practices that nurses do. Just an interesting ( for me) comparison.

....I agree with Quattrocento. The "professions" are best defined in very traditional terms.

Medicine, the Law, the Clergy etc.

These may or may not be well paid, but do constitute a portion of the establishment that we all recognise.

I am a General and Children's nurse, yet whenever the occasion arises, I describe myself as "skilled manual".

This ultimately is what it is.

...and there is no problem with that methinks!

I would consider nursing to be a profession.

And teaching.

Lawyers? hmmm. no comment.

But why does nursing have to be secondary to medicine when we are a seperate profession with different skills?

No we don't diagnose or carry out surgery but we know patients a lot more holistically and thus carry out much more important roles through communication.

Doctors would not be able to do their job without nurses. In an intensive care setting nurses monitor the patient 24 hours a day. The medical staff rely on our observations to make thier judgements and diagnosis.

It is definately a gender issue

it's also attitude for me. IN court today a local solicitor behaved dreadfully toward one of his clients ( a mentally ill woman on charges of assaulting her daughters, one being 8 months pregnant - so a 'difficult' client). In a heated exchange with him, I invited him to go and actually speak with her. He grimaced. This was witnessed by an admin worker who I know as a person with excellent application to task, and a care about her job that set her well above said solicitor. Key feature was her professionalism, where he has none.

I think it is a gender bias to some extent.I think it is a GOOD thing that more men are coming into nursing too,its great to have a mix.(I have a very good male boss) Interestingly I read a stat that said that although only 10% of nurses are male the percentage of men in top nursing jobs is higher than women now.

The general public does not see that nursing and medicine are distinct professions who work alongside each other in very different ways. Drs cure, nurses care. But yes, it is (historically) very much a gender issue.

Message withdrawn

As long as Nurses continue to be seen as "hand maidens" for Doctors, then no, we probably wont be seen as a proper profession, despite what I said in my earlier post.

Things have changed, but they haven't changed enough. At the end of the day, we all went in to nursing to CARE for patients, not to worry about what people thought of us.

If I end my shift with parents who are fully informed about their baby, a baby who is as stable as they can be, then I am happy. I know that I am a professional, I don't need other people to tell me I am.

I am so professional, that have just realised that I've drunk a lot of wine and have to get up in 7 hours time, get 2 children organised then work a 12.5 hour shift.

Are nurses professional?

I don't think it is a gender issue. Medicine and law are very hard to get in to (more than 50% of medical school entrants are now female - not sure of law stats but it's probably similar) and only the most academically able make it, and I think they are rightly regarded as higher status professions than those that are easier to get into, train for and practice. I think it boils down to intellectual rigour of the training and of the work. I would regard nursing more as a vocation than a traditional profession, and I would think of school teaching in the same way, while medicine, law, university lecturing and things like engineering are what I regard as real professions. TBH I don't see the need for nursing degrees, and I say that as someone who teaches student nurses.

Sometimes though, at risk of being flamed,amongst all the hoops we have to jump through and boxes we have to tick whilst completing all of our flipping KSF competencies,and all the additional courses,at the heart nursing is about the practical nitty gritty of it all.I mean you can read a gazillion books about venepuncture and cannulation,or administering cytotoxics,or inserting PICC lines etc etc but until you actually get the hands on stuff and do it you can't really learn it can you?

shergar, I agree about your comment re the need for nursing degrees, 1st nursing qualification , non degree pre project 2000, 2nd qualification, degree but the teaching/academic standards were far higher I feel with the 'old style' training.

...knowing a few Orthopaedic Surgeons, I am unsure of the use of the phrase skilled manual.

Simian toffs might be preferable.

(wry grin emoticon thingy)

YABU - I think most people view it as a profession and massively respect nurses

If you read on to the end of the wiki entry there are several areas where nursing falls down in terms of being a profession eg 3,5 partly 7, 13 usually 19 and 20

sally I think your point that a newly qualifies nurse can go into any area argues against it being a profession characteristically they require more training/qualys

Maybe it should be classed as a para-profession?

think it's a real shame that nursing has become so degree focused. i know many nurses who learned the 'old school' way who think the same.

professions - I'm old fashioned and am going to stick with law and medicine plus some newcomers like accountancy. wouldn't have thought to class the clergy as a profession. it's all snobbery really.